1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of suspensions for disk drives. More particularly, this invention relates to the field of a disk drive suspension whose baseplate has a stamped distal tip.
2. Description of Related Art
Magnetic hard disk drives and other types of spinning media drives such as optical disk drives are well known. Hard disk drives generally include a spinning magnetic disk containing a pattern of magnetic ones and zeroes on it that constitutes the data stored on the disk drive, as well as a disk drive suspension to which a magnetic head slider is mounted proximate a distal end of the load beam. FIG. 1 shows a generalized dual stage actuated (DSA) hard disk drive suspension 10 including a baseplate or mount plate 20, one or two PZT microactuators 14, a load beam 30 including a spring or hinge portion 32 and a beam portion 34, and a flexure gimbal assembly 36 to which a head slider (not shown) carrying a read/write transducer head is attached at the distal end of the beam portion. The read/write head writes data to, and reads data from, the data medium which is a spinning magnetic disk drive, or possibly optical medium in an optical disk drive. Baseplate 20 includes both a mounting portion 21 which is mounted to an actuator arm (not shown) via swage hub 28, and a distal tip 22 to which the hinge 32 is typically spot welded at weld points 38. Typically hinge 32 is formed integrally with beam portion 34, so typically load beam 30 is understood to include spring 32. However, spring 32 and beam portion 34 can be formed separately and then welded together. A number of structural variations from the generalized construction shown in FIG. 1 are possible.
FIG. 2 is an oblique view of a the baseplate 20 of FIG. 1. Baseplate 20 is typically die cut or otherwise cut in a metal cutting operation from a relatively thick stainless steel plate. In contrast, hinge 32, beam portion 34, and the stainless steel portion of flexure gimbal assembly 36 are usually etched from thin sheets of stainless steel.
In standard suspension terminology and as used herein, the term “proximal” means closest or closer to the end of the suspension which is mounted to the actuator arm; in contrast, the term “distal” means closest or closer to the cantilevered end of the suspension, i.e., the end of the suspension that is opposite the actuator arm.